"No Man's Sky": Eight years after a launch on Steam finally "very positive"

More than eight years after its release, the space epic "No Man's Sky" is finally making up for its teething troubles and has now collected so many positive reviews on Steam that the bad ones from the early days are disappearing. As Sean Murray from the responsible game studio Hello Games has now discovered, the more than 245,000 reviews on the Steam gaming platform are now "Very positive". This means that more than 80 percent of them are positive. The many poor reviews following the game's unfortunate release were the main reason why this rating seemed unreachable.

Bumpy start

"No Man's Sky" was released in August 2016 and was preceded by a lot of hype. The game was unable to meet many of the sometimes unrealistically high expectations, partly because a number of promises made by the developers proved to be inaccurate. Negative reviews rained down, especially on Steam, the central point of contact for dissatisfied players. Numerous buyers were disappointed by the initial lack of multiplayer mode and the frequently repetitive objects on the procedurally generated planets. However, where other game studios quickly gave up, Hello Games continued to work and improved the game with extensive updates.

With the improvements and expansions, which were free for all purchasers, Hello Games has gradually fulfilled the promises originally made. Three years after the initial release, the predominantly negative reviews on Steam were then balanced out. But every additional percentage point became correspondingly more difficult. Most recently, in July, Hello Games upgraded the graphics of the eight-year-old title and dramatically improved them in certain areas. For Hello Games, the work is not yet finished: The next extensive update has been announced under the working title "No Man's Sky: Worlds Part 2". The large and loyal fan community will appreciate it.

(mho)